Back to You (8 page)

Just then the waiter approached the table, and the girls were temporarily distracted as they placed their orders. As soon as he left, however, Jenn turned back to Lauren.

“But when I think chiropractor, I think graying hair and crow’s feet and a little potbelly.”

“Not even close,” Lauren said.

“No? What’s he look like?”

Lauren pursed her lips and looked up to the ceiling, thinking. “Kind of like Abercrombie and Fitch released a new line of medical scrubs.”

“Shut up,” Jenn said, her eyes lighting up, and Lauren nodded. “Well shit. That’s got jackpot written all over it. Good for you, lady.”

Lauren laughed as she moved her wine glass out of the way to make room for the salad the waiter was placing in front of her. “We’ll see,” she said, laying her napkin on her lap.

Jenn nodded, spearing a tomato and then pointing at her with the fork. “I’m so on to you, by the way.”

“On to me?”

“Yep,” Jenn said, popping the
p
before she ate the tomato. “This guy’s your doctor, which comes with controversy. It’s your MO.”

“
What
?” Lauren said through a laugh. “What are you talking about?”

“Come on, Lauren. For starters, can we agree on the fact that you jump into relationships with guys, and as soon as things start to get good, you bail?”

“I do not!”

“Tyler Ramsey.”

“He was my college roommate’s brother. Things got weird. Try dating a guy when you live with one of his family members.”

“Greg Harris.”

“He was a substitute at my school!” Lauren said, exasperated. “He was always around. I didn’t have a chance to miss him. Or breathe, for that matter. Besides, it’s like a cardinal rule that you shouldn’t date people you work with.”

Jenn grinned. “Which brings me to my point. Guys with controversy. You know it going in, but you pick them anyway. It’s like your insurance policy. It gives you a reason to get out before things get too serious.”

“Please,” Lauren said with an eye roll, taking another sip of wine.

“You can deny it,” Jenn said with a shrug. “Doesn’t make it any less true.”

“Whatever,” Lauren laughed. “All I know is that when I find the right guy, there won’t be a reason for me to leave.”

Jenn lifted her glass. “I can toast to that.” And Lauren tapped her glass to Jenn’s, her smile masking the fact that she couldn’t help wondering if there would ever be a guy she wouldn’t run from.

“What story do you want tonight?” Michael asked his daughter as she climbed into bed wearing her Disney Princess pajamas, her hair still damp and smelling of her shampoo.

“Can we look at the picture book?” she asked as she grabbed her stuffed cat and tucked it under the covers beside her.

“The picture book?” he asked, surprised. “You haven’t asked for that in a long time.”

Michael walked over to her bookshelf, squatting down in front of it as he looked for the small red photo album he’d put together the first year he moved to New York. There were only about eight pictures in it; for him, it had been a way to remember those things from his old life that he wanted to remember. And everything else, everything that wasn’t in that little book, could just disappear.

It was a nice idea, but he should have known his demons would exist with or without photographic documentation.

Still, he kept the album, even though he’d only looked at it a handful of times in rare moments of wistfulness. And then one day, Erin found it when she had crawled under his bed while they were playing hide and seek. For months on end after that, she asked for “the picture book” as her bedtime story; Michael would sit with her and they’d look at the pictures, and he’d tell her the story behind each one. After a while, all he had to do was turn the pages, and she’d be the one reciting the stories to him.

But when they had moved to Bellefonte last month, their new neighbor, a kind, elderly lady named Mrs. Brigante, had given Erin a box of fairy-tale books as a welcome present, and she had become so entranced with them that she had forgotten about the album until tonight.

Michael grabbed the little red book and walked back to her bed, sitting beside her and lifting his arm. She immediately crawled into the nook of his body, snuggling against him with her stuffed cat, and Michael put his arm around her before he opened the album in front of them.

“Do you think you remember the stories, or should I tell them?” he asked.

“I remember,” she said softly, pointing to the first picture. “That’s you, Daddy, when you were a little boy and a baseball star.”

Michael smiled, looking down at the faded picture. He was in his red and white peewee baseball uniform, his oversized hat nearly covering his eyes, which were squinted against the sun despite the giant visor. He was just shy of six years old; the team’s coach had taken photos of each of the players that year and given the pictures to them in their end-of-the-season goodie bags. Michael had kept his in his drawer for months after that, with hopes that when he finally found out his father’s new address, he could send him the picture and show him that he was a baseball player now, just like his dad wanted.

He hoped maybe that would be enough to bring him back.

“That’s right,” he said. “I played second base. Nobody ever got past me.”

“Can I play second base?”

“You can do anything you want, baby girl. How about one of these days while it’s still warm, we go outside and I’ll show you how to throw and catch like me?”

“Okay,” she murmured sleepily, reaching up to turn the page. “That’s you and your Grandma Rose. You were sticky, Daddy,” she said with a giggle. “‘Cause you got in the jelly.”

Michael smiled down at her, leaning over to kiss the top of her head. “That’s some memory you got.” He turned his attention to the picture of him sitting on his grandmother’s lap, his hair wadded into sticky clumps and his face and hands covered in orange goop. “My Grandma Rose was the best cook ever. She made homemade jelly, and apricot was my favorite. And one day…” he trailed off, knowing Erin would continue.

“One day she made some and left it on the table and you ate it all up!” she squealed and burst into hysterics, the kind of youthful, genuine laughter that always made Michael respond in kind.

“I ate it all up,” he repeated with a nod. “And I made a big mess, huh?”

“Yeah, you need a bath, Daddy.” Michael smiled before she added, “My grandma lives far away.”

His smile dropped. “Yes,” he said, trying to keep his voice casual.

“When will she come to visit me and make me apricot jelly?”

He swallowed. “I don’t know. It’s a very far trip,” he said, rubbing her hair, and he couldn’t help but wonder, as he so often did, if he was doing the right thing by keeping his mother out of Erin’s life. When he had called her against his better judgment to tell her he had gotten his girlfriend pregnant, she used the opportunity to point out all the lives he’d ruined, and how this would just be another one to add to the list. She ended the conversation with, “For God’s sake, I hope you’re going to abort that child.”

And he hadn’t spoken to her since.

But he wondered—if she were to meet Erin, if she got to see how smart and wonderful and kind she was, maybe she would be the kind of grandmother Erin deserved.

Or maybe she’d ruin her, the way she had him.

“What else did Grandma Rose cook?” Erin asked, pulling him back to the present, and he smiled, thankful for the reprieve.

“She made the best zucchini bread,” Michael said, lifting his arm to accommodate her as she snuggled closer to him. “That’s how she tricked me into eating my vegetables.”

“
Daddy
,” she sing-songed. “Begetables don’t grow in bread!”

Michael laughed. “No, but you can bake them in bread. It tastes delicious. Almost like cake.”

“Can we make zucchini bread?”

“We can try,” he laughed. “I’m not as good as Grandma Rose, but we can certainly try,” he added, turning the page.

“That’s Daddy and his friend at bagruation,” Erin said.

“Graduation,” Michael corrected softly, his eyes on the picture.

“Hey!” Erin squealed, sitting up suddenly, pointing at the picture. “That’s Miss Lauren!”

Michael stared at the picture, although he hardly needed to. He had looked at it so often after he first left Scranton that he could close his eyes and conjure it up with perfect clarity.

He stood several inches taller than her in his black graduation gown, his lips curved into a slight smile as he looked down at her. Lauren leaned into him with one arm extended, holding the camera away from them as she took the picture. Her head was resting against his chest, her dark red hair spilling over his gown as she smiled at the camera.

Her smile was always his favorite part.

She smiled straight up to her eyes, so happy to be next to him, so proud of him that day. She was the only one who had showed up for him, standing and clapping when his name was called, whistling loudly as he walked across the stage, and taking the one and only picture of him in his graduation attire because, as she had beamed, “Everyone needs to remember their graduation day.”

“Miss Lauren dances with us,” Erin said matter-of-factly as she laid back down.

“Oh yeah?” Michael answered, still lost in the picture.

“Yes. And if someone’s sad, she hugs them. Once, Kayla was crying because she missed her mommy, and Miss Lauren taught her the Brave Song. And then she taught it to everyone. And she promised if we sing it when we’re scared, we’ll feel brave.”

Michael smiled, pulling his eyes from the picture to look down at his daughter. “Didn’t I tell you Miss Lauren was nice?”

“Yes,” she said with a nod. “I think she’s really a princess, but she just forgets to wear her crown.”

“I think so too,” Michael said, and his voice wasn’t as upbeat as he intended; he dropped his eyes and swallowed before turning the page.

“That’s Daddy and Uncle Aaron,” Erin said. “That’s how I got my name. Aaron, Erin. Erin, Aaron,” she sang, moving her shoulders in a little dance beside him.

“That’s right, baby,” he said, forcing a smile. This probably wasn’t the best night to do this; looking at Aaron’s picture on the tail end of looking at Lauren’s was a little more than he could handle just then.

“Uncle Aaron lives in heaven with your Grandma Rose, right Daddy?”

“Right,” he said softly, closing the album, and Erin was too distracted to object.

“And his bed is a cloud and he plays games all day and he eats so much ice cream!” she expounded excitedly.

Michael laughed softly as he stood from the bed. “He has a nice life up in heaven. But he still watches over you. From all the way up there,” he said, pointing up to the ceiling. “He protects you when I’m not around.”

He leaned down and kissed her forehead before he ushered her under the covers and stood, turning on her night-light.

“Did he protect you when you were little too?”

Michael stopped and closed his eyes.

Always
, he thought, but instead he said, “Yes, baby girl. Sweet dreams.”

And then he walked out of her room, turning off the light and closing the door, thankful he was able to get out before she could see the look in his eyes.

M
ichael sat on his knees at the dinner table, pushing his green beans around on his plate with the hopes of making it look like he’d eaten some.

“Is it time for birthday cake yet?” he asked, thinking of the triple chocolate cake his mother had baked for him.

“Not until those green beans are gone,” his mother called from the kitchen where she was loading the dishwasher.

“Come on buddy, a couple of bites,” his father said from behind him, rubbing his hand over the back of Michael’s head before he walked around the table and sat down next to Aaron.

“Are you excited for your party this weekend?” his brother asked, and Michael grinned and nodded. It was the first party he’d be having with his friends from school, and his mother had booked Jumpin’ Beans gymnasium. It had been the talk of his class for the past few weeks.

“You should be. You’re a big man now. Five years old is a whole hand.” Aaron held up his hand, and Michael leaned forward to slap him high five. Aaron laughed, and Michael grinned proudly as he ate another one of his green beans. Nothing made him happier than when his brother thought he was cool.

“Okay, so what are you working on?” their father asked as he looked over Aaron’s shoulder to see the homework assignment.

“Science, but I don’t know if I’m doing this right.”

“Well, I’ll do my best, but seventh-grade science might be beyond my scope of memory,” he said with a laugh, turning the notebook on the table so he could get a better look. “Oh, hey wait, I think I remember this stuff. Punting Squares, right?”

Aaron laughed. “
Punnett
Squares.”

“Same difference,” his dad said, playfully punching him on the shoulder, and Michael forced another green bean into his mouth as he watched them.

“We’re doing eye color,” Aaron said. “I have to figure out the possible offspring of two hybrids and two purebreds.”

“Yeah, I remember this,” his father said with a nod. “The dominant gene is represented by a capital letter, and the recessive is lowercase, right?”

“I think,” Aaron said, squinting at his notebook.

“Here,” his father said. “Let’s do the purebred. We’ll use two blue-eyed people. So put two lowercase
b
’s there, and two more over there,” he added, pointing to the square on Aaron’s page. “Right. Now cross them, and see what you get.”

“Are you done with those green beans yet?” Michael’s mother called from the kitchen.

“Almost,” Michael lied, looking down as he pushed a few more around his plate.

“There, you did it,” his dad said.

“Yeah, but that can’t be right.”

“Why not?”

“‘Cause it says that two blue-eyed people can’t have a brown-eyed baby.”

“Right,” his father said.

“But you and Mom have blue eyes, and look at Michael.”

The sudden silence was what Michael remembered the most. It was so abrupt that he looked up from his plate, because to him it seemed like everyone in the room suddenly disappeared.

And then he saw his brother’s face, and he was suddenly afraid without understanding why. It was the same face Aaron wore when he’d accidentally ridden his bike too close to their mother’s new car in the driveway and scratched the side: a pathetic mixture of fear and guilt.

Michael only remembered bits and pieces after that, partly because he’d blocked it out, and partly because he didn’t understand how the pieces fit together.

He remembered Aaron dragging him upstairs when the yelling started. The voices were so loud and strained that he didn’t even recognize them as his parents’. He remembered hearing words he knew were bad even though he didn’t know what some of them meant. And he remembered the shrill sound of his mother crying.

But above all, he remembered hearing his name over and over, interspersed with
sorry
and
please
. His mother kept saying, “He meant nothing,” and Michael wondered if she was talking about him.

Did
he
mean nothing? Had he been bad? He tried to remember something that he could have done to cause this, but he couldn’t think.

The yelling transitioned into the sound of things being thrown, and he cupped his hands over his ears.

He didn’t understand any of this.

Aaron sat next to him on the floor of his bedroom, holding him and telling him that everything was okay, even though Michael could hear in his brother’s voice that it wasn’t. And that’s how he fell asleep that night: curled against his brother’s side as Aaron continued to talk to him in an attempt to drown out the sounds of what was happening below.

The next morning Michael woke up hoping everything would be okay. Everyone would say they were sorry, and maybe they could have his birthday cake for breakfast.

Instead, his mother was locked in her bedroom, and his father was standing in the living room with a bunch of suitcases. He wanted to ask him where he was going. He wanted to ask if he could come. But the words stuck in his throat, and he kept looking to his brother, wanting him to say the words that he couldn’t.

But Aaron’s head was bowed, his eyes sad, and that’s when Michael knew that whatever this was, it was bad.

His father spoke to Aaron and promised him he would still see him, just not everyday.

And then he left without saying a word to Michael.

In the days that followed, he did come back. But only for Aaron, and only a few times. Each time he showed up, a screaming match would ensue between his parents that mirrored the first one, and eventually his father started calling Aaron instead of coming over.

And a month later, he moved away. Michael remembered asking his teacher where California was, and she said he’d have to take a plane to get there.

He knew better than to ask his mother about anything that happened that night, or anything pertaining to his father at all, for that matter. The one time he tried, his mother yelled at him and told him she didn’t want to talk about Daddy anymore.

It was more than her just being angry with Michael. She was
mean
to him. She’d become mean in general after that night, but especially to him. And eventually he just found it easier and safer to keep his distance from her.

In a matter of a few weeks, he’d lost his father and managed to make his mother extremely mad, and he didn’t understand how or why.

So Michael did the only thing that made sense; he clung to his big brother, the only sense of normalcy left for him, the only shred that remained of his former life.

For a long time, he didn’t dare talk with his brother about what happened. Aaron never brought it up, and Michael was afraid to do so for fear of losing him, for fear of making Aaron angry the way he made his father and his mother angry.

But one night after Aaron got off the phone with their father, and Michael’s hopes that his dad might ask to speak to him were once again crushed, he finally broke and asked his brother what he’d done wrong.

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” he said quietly, walking into his bedroom, and Michael followed.

“But Daddy’s mad at me.”

“No, he’s not. He’s mad at Mommy,” Aaron said, walking over to his shelf and grabbing his Walkman.

“But why won’t he talk to me anymore?” Michael asked, and his own voice sounded funny to him, like it was shaking.

Aaron looked up from his cassette tapes, his expression pained, but he didn’t answer.

“Does he still love me?” Michael asked, and this time his voice squeaked, and his eyes felt hot.

“Yes,” Aaron promised. “He still loves you. He just…he just forgot that he does,” he added softly.

Michael didn’t want to cry in front of his big brother. He wanted to be a big man. But he felt his face contort as a little sob escaped his lips, and he dropped his head, trying to hide.

Aaron was up in a second, putting his arm around Michael as he walked him over to the bed. “It’s okay, Mike,” he said. “You didn’t do anything wrong. Mommy and Daddy are mad at each other. But they love you, and I love you.”

“But what if you forget that you love me, like Daddy did?” Michael said through his tears, and Aaron shook his head.

“Never. I’ll never forget.”

“Even if you get mad?” he hiccupped.

“Even if I get mad. I promise, I won’t ever forget that I love you.”

And with that, Michael buried his face in his big brother’s shirt and sobbed.

It was the last time he ever allowed himself to cry.

After that he ignored the pain and the confusion, the feelings of rejection from both his mother and his father. He had his big brother, and that was all that mattered.

That was all he needed.

Eventually, Michael got used to harboring questions he knew would never be answered. It just became a part of who he was, and he became very good at ignoring his feelings.

It wasn’t until eight years later, sitting in the middle of Miss McCarthy’s third-period science class, that he finally understood.

They were learning about Punnett Squares.

And suddenly he knew why the man he thought was his father left him when he was five, and why he never wanted to see Michael again. Just like that, after all the years spent wondering, it was suddenly crystal clear why his family had fallen apart.

It was all his fault.